In areas of forest pasture, livestock and game frequently eat the leaves and shoots of young trees up to a height of around two meters, often preventing the regeneration of the trees.
To prevent this, the landowners often erect cages around the young trees that usually comprise a covering structure, using all types of materials; works meshes, electrowelded mesh, grills, wooden stakes and boards, normal metallic material, semirigid metallic livestock material, chicken wire, etc., with the structure formed from corrugated iron bars, PNL stakes or wooden stakes.
Once the cage has been constructed, it has to be covered with barbed wire to prevent the livestock or game from scratching at the cage eventually pushing it over. This makes the operation more expensive, as it requires more material and more manpower to set it up, making it almost impossible to reuse this cage with another tree as it is difficult and costly to disassemble it.
Therefore, although in practice, several types of protector are used, all are homemade and there is currently no specific product for this end.
This problem could be minimized if there a rigid or semirigid material existed that was barbed and that could serve to cover a structure of stakes and crossbars.
A wide range of metallic or meshes plastic meshes and bars and metallic nets are available on the market, obtained from electrolytic processes or other processes, of the “flat” type that can be used for the ends described, but none of them are of the barbed types (sclerophyllic), all of them being smooth, and so they do not perform the function for which the sclerophyllic mesh is designed.
The only barbed mesh that exists is military, made from braided barbed wire, but it is not flat, occupies a large volume and is not indicated for the ends of sclerophyllic mesh.
There are also models of forest protectors for smaller game and/or roe deer, although these are ineffective against livestock or larger game, as they are not barbed.